‘Alternative’ tests come to third graders’ rescue

Kathie Klodell, a teacher at Rees E. Price Elementary, in East Price Hill, works with a group of third graders on a reading assignment during the school's summer program on Tuesday, June 11.
(Photo:
The Enquirer/ Amanda Rossmann
)

Results of Ohio’s tests will be out next week, giving schools and parents a look at how many kids are in danger of being held back under the Third Grade Reading Guarantee.

If early data from local school districts are any indication, that number will be extremely small.

That’s because the state has allowed enough leniency that students can be promoted to fourth grade even if they fail the state’s Ohio Achievement Assessment.

The biggest factor: alternative tests.

The Ohio Department of Education in March told schools they could offer alternative assessments, including the Iowa Assessment, the Northwest Evaluation Association Measurement of Academic Progress and the Terra Nova.

If students passed the reading portion of those tests, they could be promoted, even if they’d failed the OAA.

Many districts took advantage of that opportunity. The alternative tests aren’t necessarily easier than the OAAs, educators say, but they are different – different enough that many struggling readers are passing.

Cincinnati Public Schools, for example, shrunk its number of potential third-grade repeaters from nearly 900, based on fall OAA results, to 100 by offering the alternative tests. That’s a 97 percent passage rate.

In the Mason school district in Warren County, 101 third-graders had been at risk of repeating. Now, after taking the alternative assessments, that number has shrunk to zero.

Other schools are seeing similar results. In Butler County’s Lakota school district, 12 students are in danger of repeating the year. In Fairfield, that number is nine. In the Northwest school district, five students are still in danger of repeating the year. In the West Clermont school district, all but about 20 students have passed.

All of this means the dire predictions – that thousands of Southwest Ohio third-graders will be held back this year – likely won’t come to pass.

“The alternate assessments were very helpful,” said Jennifer Blust, director of curriculum services at Northwest schools. “We were going to run a summer program but the numbers were so low that we just set them up with tutoring.”

The Third Grade Reading Guarantee requires students repeat third grade if they don’t score high enough – a 392 or above – on the state’s reading test. This is the first year students can be held back.

The law was controversial. Some thought it was too punitive. Districts scurried to hire reading specialists, often at the expense of other programs. Headlines warned of the thousands of students expected to have to repeat the year.

Ultimately though, the law ended up being more flexible than it originally seemed.

Exceptions were made for students with disabilities or for whom English was a second language. Then the state said it would offer summer tests so students who hadn’t passed by the end of the year would get one more chance. The biggest boost was when the state approved alternative assessments as another route to fourth grade.

“It’s certainly helps for planning and staffing purposes,” said Cincinnati Public Schools spokeswoman Janet Walsh. “Now we have no reason to believe we need to staff for hundreds of additional third graders.”

Supporters of the law say it is working as intended. It prompted schools to pay more attention to struggling third-grade readers, a critical milestone in predicting a child’s future success.

Shelley Stein, principal of Cincinnati’s Rees E. Price elementary school, said she’s still paying attention, especially to the students who failed one test, but passed another.

“We want to know why they’re not passing the OAA but they are passing the MAP,” she said. “And we’ll still provide interventions to those students.” ■